STARC: born at Yale, goes national with a bang

Even the leaders of the new student activist group, Student Alliance to Reform Corporations (STARC), are amazed at how fast their association has grown. "This is an idea whose time has come," STARC founder Terra Lawson-Remer, MC '00, said at the rally on Sun., Nov. 7. "Our growth was organic, yet we have a unified vision."

COURTESY GRACE ROLLINS STARC activists staged a symbolic march down Wall Street.

STARC, founded at Yale last April, held a conference this past weekend to draft a declaration for its movement. The conference was attended by over 500 students from more than 130 different campuses. Keynote speakers included Bari-Ellen Roberts, lead plaintiff in the recent racial and sexual discrimination class action suit against Texaco, and Dr. Owens Wiwa, co-founder of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People and brother of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian activist and poet who was hanged by her country's government.

"We are going to be a force for change in the next five, 10, and 15 years," Lawson-Remer told STARC members. "We've created methods of communication, regional committees, steering committees, and made many plans for the future." She said STARC's first plan was to convince Yale to disclose where it was investing its money. Yale currently invests an unusually low percentage of its endowment in public stocks, preferring private direct investment.

The students cheered each speaker enthusiastically, waving signs with messages such as "Corporations breed plastic people," "Suzuki = Slave Labor," "Proctor & Gamble—who died for your laundry?" and "Capitalism kills."

One of the sign-bearers, Brian Heath, a junior at Ohio University, said, "Our school is forming a STARC chapter. I learned how to organize here, and [I learned] details about the issues we're fighting."

Lawson-Remer intended STARC to be an umbrella organization to unite campus activism on a national level, and it has managed to grow so fast in large part because it built on existing campus activist organizations. Even so, efforts to expand to group's independent agenda, such as an epic three-month road trip by Cornell graduate Jonah Zern, have been crucial. He started in Connecticut this September and logged 11,000 miles traveling between universities. "I would give presentations and inspire people at each school to join our organization," Zern said. "We decided STARC should be a grassroots phenomenon; you can't do it better than face-to-face." Kathryn Kline, BK '03, STARC's Yale press liaison, said, "We built on our existing contacts." Kline added that the formalized declaration helped national organizations: "Now we have a unified sense of what we're trying to do," she said.

Such organizational and national prominence is remarkable for another reason—many of STARC's most dedicated members at Yale became active in the group just this year. "I heard about STARC from a friend," Kline said. Vanessa Marvin, PC '00, also began work over the summer. "I wanted to get involved, so Terra set me to making some t-shirts," she said. "After that, I just got sucked in."

STARC's ambition and speedy growth has attracted national media attention. The New York Times is planning to include STARC in an upcoming article on student activism, and The Nation is planning a cover story on the resurgence in student activism, which will include a profile of STARC. In addition, Businessweek is planning a feature on STARC's "Egregious Eight"—the companies they believe have committed the worst abuses. These companies are Walmart, Proctor & Gamble, Dow Chemicals, Smith Barney, Chevron and Shell Oil, Occidental Petroleum, Walt Disney, and Monsanto.

STARC proudly claims some recent successes by activist groups who have joined the fold—the University of Washington, Stanford and Tufts Universities, and Haverford College no longer invest in tobacco companies; Harvard, Stanford and American University cut off ties with Pepsico for supporting a military regime in Burma, and Vassar College decided to invest two percent of its endowment in a socially responsible fund. Upcoming plans include a national day of action to protest a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. Angela Storey, STARC's Washington coordinator, said, "The close proximity of the ministerial meetings gives us a unique opportunity to mobilize the students on our campuses around the WTO and then develop those campaigns into ones for comprehensive corporate responsibility and university investment."

Yet the Yale chapter of STARC claims national organization and the drafting of a declaration as its most important achievements so far. "The Administration has not been very receptive so far," Kline said. "Students Against Sweatshops has started holding meetings with [University President Richard] Levin [GRD '74], but we're not at that stage yet. Hopefully we will be soon."

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